The announcement about the transfer of 12.5 hectares of India United (Indu) Mills land for the Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar memorial will be made in Parliament on Wednesday.

Union textile minister Anand Sharma informed the Congress members of Parliament from Maharashtra about this on
Tuesday.

Parliamentary affairs minister Rajeev Shukla will make a statement to this effect in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday, a day before the followers of Ambedkar gather at Chaitya Bhoomi in Dadar to pay

their respects on his death anniversary.

The decision is significant for the Congress-led state government as dalits make up for about 12% of the state’s population and can influence the fate of electoral politics in 2014.

Chief minister Prithviraj Chavan who had met Sharma in New Delhi on Tuesday, said, “Sharma has assured the declaration would be made before December 6 and the state government will form a special authority for the memorial after the land is transferred.”

Activists of the Republican Sena, an outfit led by Dr Ambedkar’s grandson Anandraj Ambedkar, had camped inside the mill premises at Prabhadevi on December 6 last year, opposing the government’s proposal to allot only 4 acres of the plot for the memorial.